Have you ever read the book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie? Where shit snowballs really easily? Well that is the best way I can explain this project. All I wanted to do was make a shirt out of the same pattern of my last dress. Then this happened:

Somehow a pullover shirt with bound edges turned into a two piece dress with a homemade horse hair hem.

And can we take a minute to look at all the pattern matching? But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start from the beginning.

Yes, I made a simple pull over shirt with darts (that need to be lowered for next time) and homemade bias tape neck and arm cuff finishes.

The sleeves didn't set in perfectly so I just gathered it at the shoulder and made it a puff sleeve. I also did a rounded hem, with a little bit of some high low action.

Love it.

And of course I took the a lot of my time to pattern match.

LOOK AT THE PATTERN MATCHING! I really held my breath doing anything with the sleeves. My greatest fear was that one sleeve would carry the plaid perfectly and the other one would have screwed the whole look up...but it didn't. It worked out. I know, I'm as surprised as you are.

So there I was, with a kick ass shirt, and I notice I have a good hunk of fabric left over...maybe enough to make a skirt...

(This is the only photo with the crop top because if I moved it showed too much skin for my taste)

I didn't have enough fabric to do a full circle so I drafted up a half circle skirt. That's when I got the idea to make some horse hair braid, but those look the best with a full skirt, so I cut the biggest side panels I could from the scraps to add more fullness to the skirt. So it ended up being like 2/3 of a circle, which if I knew that was going to happen I would have left the fabric as a rectangle and just had more gathers at the waist. Hindsight? Am I right?

I didn't end up adding the gathers evenly to the waist band, you can see here there are a lot more in the back. The front was left with these weird bubbles of ruffles so I folded them down and sewed them in place.

I am left with some odd seams and pattern silliness, but I still love it. And it looks a lot better than it did.

I went lazy with closure and basically just added a button. There is kinda a hole there (I sewed the raw edges at least!) and the band overlaps enough that it folds over and doesn't show any skin or undershirt. You will also notice that the waistband is all kinda of fucked. I ran out of fabric so the front is cut on the bias and the back is not. I made the bias the front because nothing lined up, so at least it looks on purpose when worn with the matching shirt.

My horse hair braid is just really thick tulle doubled up and sewn together. I wish I hadn't doubled it up. I thought it would have made it stiffer, and it did, but it also made it have these odd puffs in places that I'm not the biggest fan of, but I wanted to try it out ya know.

Long story short, I do like some puff in my skirt. I was worried it would be too... something, idk I was scared to throw money at a real horsehair braid because I wasn't sure I was going to keep it in, now I know I will in fact like it, it is worth the time and money because making some took a long time and was prob harder to work with than the real kind.

I also notice this winter I'm really going for the school girl look.

The real magic of this undertaking is when it is all worn together though. So let's just take a minute to appreciate it all together shall we?

Thanks for indulging me. I really love this look. The funny thing is after I got done making it, and I was watching videos that no one would like to broadcast that they watched, I came across this:

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!? I have been a fan of Gwen since I was 10, always loved her style, and I made something that not only she would wear..SHE DID WEAR! Sure, hers is made out of different fabric, has a collar and a bow, and probably has a full circle skirt, but holy fuck, I shit myself when I saw this. It legit looks like I copied her dress, but I swear to every fan girl gene in my body that I found this after my shirt and skirt were done.You can follow me on Instagram at pocketsandsleeves or if you'd like to watch my latest projects in the works, add me on Snapchat at Orangeowl4. You can always e-mail me at Pocketsandsleeves@gmail.com

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About Me

I only make patterns that have pockets and sleeves, and if they don't come with them I will walk you through how I added them. Take inspiration from my style, or just use me as a reference for great pattern finds, either way you will learn a thing or two from all my wins and fails from my sewing adventurers.